building an arm

Shyft

greetings, 1st time posting, but here goes:

I'm building a character in maya 7.0, and am trying to plan out how his arm is going to work, and here's why. His arm from just past the elbow down is encased in armor, I.E non deforming. For all intents and purposes, it's basically a robotic forearm.

Now my problem is that the human arm twists not quite at the wrist, but along the whole forearm with the radius and ulna. I need help figuring out how to build the deforming shoulder-upper arm - elbow and then mesh it with the non deforming mechanical. I'm trying to figure this out now, so i can build it with a rig in mind.

to summarize, i need to build the model's 'forearm' to twist at the elbow, without it compacting and looking funky as it goes inside the robotic part. I can provide the concept art im working from, and any renders, but i haven't actually started building the arm yet either. Though if pictures are needed, it might take me a sec to figure out how to get them on this forum.

thanks.

citizen

Could you build the armour as a seperate mesh and child it to the arm?

Shyft

oh, easily. Which is what i intend to do, build it as a separate mesh. My problem stems from the fact that i don't know how to build the elbow to deform properly when it doesn't have a full forearm-wrist to deform with.

looking at it from a rigging/bone standpoint, the arm is this:

clavicle - shoulder - elbow - wrist - hand - handEnd - fingers and thumb

the wrist is what defines how the forearm is gonna twist, but the last time i attempted this armored arm thing, i wasn't able to get it to work.

citizen

ahh.
I'm not sure, but maybe this'll help:
3d Tutorial

Ramiel

I think you should model the entire arm and then cover it with the armor, so you will have the rest of the arm to use (even if we don't see it...)

Countdown5

Got sketches???